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Positive:
80
Mixed:
31
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews
iJun 27, 2022
Season 4 Review:
It is still dense and intense – and yet remains hugely rewarding, provided you’re willing to expend your grey matter to keep up. In particular, it displays a refreshing determination to not repeat itself and it is great fun watching familiar characters adapting to changed circumstances.
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Jun 27, 2022
Season 4 Review:
One misses the way earlier iterations of the "Westworld" operating system kept us guessing. Now that we know how the show works, it's easy to bird-dog the secrets hiding in plain sight. ... Regardless of the slack in other plotlines, [Maeve and Caleb's] propulsive force is sufficient reason to stick around and see where this season is going.
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The Daily BeastJun 27, 2022
Jun 26, 2022
Season 4 Review:
"Westworld" returns, featuring several familiar faces in unfamiliar roles, while extending aspects of a third season that creatively sailed off the rails. While there is surely intelligent life out there eager to see where this goes, at this point it's not so much a question of not being able to follow the series through its convoluted maze as simply not feeling as if it's worth the energy to try.
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Jun 24, 2022
Season 4 Review:
A visual treat packed with both moments of beauty as well as true horror. But while the narrative is less cohesive this season, with its core characters scattered to the winds, its capacity to fascinate us remains intact, especially as the themes which have always been lurking in the show become more present.
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Jun 24, 2022
Season 4 Review:
Taken on their own, then, the first four episodes of “Westworld’s” fourth season are often fun, with spiky and interesting moments sprinkled amid other elements that feel like filler. As a serious fan of the show’s early going, I will settle for “often fun.” But it’s hard to imagine that “Westworld’s” two creators — writers who set out, thrillingly, to investigate what it means to be human and who now are losing us within the maze they keep complicating — can.
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The PlaylistJun 24, 2022
Season 4 Review:
If it all sounds like “Westworld” is still ridiculously narratively divided and convoluted, it undeniably is, and the show continues to have a frustrating habit of over-writing itself into ridiculously long passages of exposition. ... But it’s encouraging to see actors like Harris, Wright, and Paul have more fun than they were in the drag of a third season.
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ColliderJun 24, 2022
Season 4 Review:
Ultimately, Westworld hasn't gone back to the place where it all started, and continues to expand its scope far beyond the borders of the park, but rather than this resulting in more disarray, what plays out are the exciting twists, turns, and surprises through time that will make anyone sit up and take notice.
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IndieWireJun 24, 2022
Season 4 Review:
There’s still so much more room for “Westworld” to break its icy tension with clever levity, or just enjoy the bizarre nature of its wild reality. (This is still the show with replica robots and cloning, yet it never duplicates the fun of a “Mission: Impossible”-style mask reveal.) Instead, it’s resolved to do what its done before to the best of its abilities, like a piece of A.I. tasked with replicating the human experience, but tapping out after it learns “excitement” and “deception.”
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TV Guide MagazineApr 6, 2020
Season 3 Review:
The dazzling third season of the dense sci-fi thriller has raised the stakes and sharpened the focus of its mind-teasing existential premise. [30 Mar - 12 Apr 2020, p.9]
RogerEbert.comMar 16, 2020
Season 3 Review:
The visual storytelling is still top-notch and the acting exemplary, but it turns out that when you take “Westworld” out of Westworld you lose a little something along the way. For all its flaws, “Westworld” was one of a kind. It’s still compelling stuff, but that’s not so much the case anymore. ... Wright, Wood, and Newton all remain excellent, but the real heavy-hitters in these first four episodes are Thompson and Paul. ... Ultimately, this paring-down is probably a step in the right direction for this flawed, unrelentingly ambitious and undeniably compelling drama.
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Mar 16, 2020
Season 3 Review:
"Westworld" needed real humanity, unprogrammed and flawed, and Paul's performance is a saving grace in this respect. ... The stakes emerge with fair efficiency in these new episodes along with a few juicy questions about who the audience is supposed to root for and whether the threat of a robot uprising even matters anymore in a world already overpowered by artificial intelligence.
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Mar 13, 2020
Season 3 Review:
It’s the most frustratingly not-quite-there show on TV: structurally bold, visually arresting, often brilliantly acted, show-off-ily erudite (to the point of having three rich folks argue the accuracy of a Plutarch quote during a society gala), and woefully predisposed to turn subtext into text. But its sense of dread is so effective that it draws even skeptical viewers into its narrative mazes.
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Mar 12, 2020
Season 3 Review:
What we mainly get in the early episodes (four of the season’s eight were available) is a pretty straightforward version of Los Angeles corporate noir, with debts to “Blade Runner” and the films of Michael Mann. ... The returning cast, though, still offers the value that the show’s writing and plotting can’t consistently deliver. ... That they can’t always jolt the show to life, or overcome its tendency toward a critical mass of self-consciousness and ponderous seriousness, isn’t their fault.
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Mar 11, 2020
Season 3 Review:
The acting remains fantastic, as substantial storylines for Paul and Thompson (who finally gets the challenging material she deserves) complement the consistently sharp performances of Wood, Newton and Wright. Action scenes are as slick as ever. Sadly, though, all that polish effectively functions as a distraction from the aimlessness of what is starting to feel like a loose collection of characters, ideas and cool narrative tricks in search of a story.
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The Daily BeastMar 11, 2020
Season 3 Review:
Season three is a blessedly streamlined one. Provided you can grasp the general gist of who’s alive, who’s a host, and who knows what is “real.” ... But this new, simpler Westworld is also no fun. ... All this said, there’s an unmistakable confidence this go-round, a steady hand at the helm that appeared all-but severed as season two neared its end.
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Mar 11, 2020
Season 3 Review:
The new season certainly has its moments, and the idea of Maeve and Dolores working at cross-purposes is intriguing. Ultimately, though, Westworld is always gonna Westworld. As Dolores puts it to Caleb, “I thought your world would be so different from mine. There isn’t any difference at all.”
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Mar 11, 2020
Mar 11, 2020
Mar 6, 2020
Season 3 Review:
This is a show that, like the most successful new tech, has shed its previous form and evolved into an entirely new product, which Nolan and Joy hinted at from the very beginning. It might take time to get used to, but after a while, we'll hopefully recognize it as an inevitable improvement that we couldn't imagine being without.
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Mar 6, 2020
Season 3 Review:
The first four episodes of its rebooted self are about making competent, well-structured TV. It’s hard not to miss a show whose flaws, emanating as they did from a passionate need to be understood and desire to understand, were so deeply human, and that have been so smoothly elided in favor of a gently humming piece of story machinery, something that’s that much closer to robot.
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Mar 6, 2020
Season 3 Review:
These episodes definitely feel less frustrating when viewed through the “final season” lens — but if Nolan and Joy are sticking to their five-to-six-season “plan,” I hope they find a way to bring things back to the parks. [Kristen's Grade: B-]
I enjoy a few aspects of this new season, Kristen. After seeing four episodes of the (notably reduced) eight-episode season, though, my main feeling is I really enjoyed the show about cowboy robots in a theme park that apparently ended years ago. [Darren's Grade: C]
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IndieWireMar 6, 2020
Season 3 Review:
Season 3 isn’t that fun — not yet. Though these first four episodes are much easier to track than Season 2 and remain flat-out gorgeous in their polished vision of a robot-led tech war, “Westworld” is a rather empty beauty. It shed all that Season 2 weight, and yet it could still stand to lose more. Episodes run far too long.
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TV Guide MagazineApr 26, 2018
Season 2 Review:
Boldly playing with time and perspective, Westworld keeps you wondering what's real, even as dangerous parks are revealed. [30 Apr - 13 May 2018, p.13]
Apr 20, 2018
Season 2 Review:
Blessedly for fans who don’t want to work so hard, less so for those wonks who do, the second season is much easier. It’s still brainy while managing to push the new narrative ahead hard and fast. It also manages to splatter the brains too: Westworld is now less a searing indictment of screen violence (the first season) and more a straight-up snuff series.
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Apr 20, 2018
Season 2 Review:
Westworld, with its florid dialogue and languid self-seriousness, isn’t as much fun as Twin Peaks was. But it’s also easy to see why Westworld is the much more popular show. It’s tapping in to currents in our culture, our feelings that the world has become a far more confusing place, with power struggles that threaten any possible unity or peace. We can’t saddle up and shoot-’em-up, but we can escape and watch others do it for us on Sunday nights.
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Apr 19, 2018
Season 2 Review:
[Westworld] impressively returns. ... The series usually hits the mark with strong storytelling that gives you a lot to ponder after the shooting is over. And the performances are outstanding. This year, the females are leading the way. Newton is a joy to watch and Wood shimmers, clearly embracing the new Delores.
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Apr 19, 2018
Season 2 Review:
Maeve supplies rare flashes of wit to a series that often equates humorlessness with seriousness of purpose. ... A low opinion of humankind may be a prerequisite to full enjoyment of the series. The viewer, less confused by the weave of time lines, is on firmer footing this season, but the show continues to obscure motivation to the point of making motivation irrelevant.
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Uncle BarkyApr 19, 2018
Season 2 Review:
Throughout these first five episodes, Westworld continues to have a mind-bending mind of its own, sometimes to the point of being close to nonsensical. It’s also a non-stop killing field, and that gets to be off-putting after a while. But Westworld also remains picturesque, challenging and undeniably distinct.
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Apr 19, 2018
Season 2 Review:
It takes a bit for Westworld to get back up to full steam, but by episode three (five hours were made available to TV critics), this futuristic, violent drama returns to fine form, introducing new parts of the park (Shogun World!), new characters and apparently new technology goals on the part of Delos, the corporation that owns Westworld.
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Apr 19, 2018
Season 2 Review:
Westworld remains a hugely ambitious series, painted on a sweeping, star-studded canvas that continues to expand in the second season. Yet the first half of that run repeats the show's more impenetrable drawbacks -- playing three-dimensional chess, while spending too much time sadistically blowing away pawns. The result is a show that's easier to admire than consistently like.
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Apr 18, 2018
Season 2 Review:
Maeve is fun to be around. She’s self-contained and withering and she takes us to new, admittedly very gory places. When the show is about her, it zips along, making sense. Dolores, on the other hand, speaks in vagaries and prophecies, clearly a part of the series’ Reddit-bait. ... Westworld itself is the Rickroll. However annoying and tedious certain parts of it are, it’s never gonna give them up.
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Apr 18, 2018
Season 2 Review:
Don’t expect too much improvement too fast from Westworld 2.0. It’s still overly focused on balletic blood baths and narrative fake-outs, and much of the dialogue still sounds as if it were written as a tagline for a subway poster, like Dolores’s “I have one last role to play: myself.” But Westworld remains a glorious production to look at, and there are stretches where it feels invigorated by its new, expanded world--freer to breathe, relax, invent.
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RogerEbert.comApr 18, 2018
Season 2 Review:
It loses its footing sometimes (it did in year one, too), but this is still smart television with film-caliber production values and incredible performances. Sometimes the writing can call a bit too much attention to itself, but the writers are smart enough in season two to avoid piling more puzzles on top of the ones they created in season one.
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Apr 17, 2018
Season 2 Review:
Yet while the series is evolving somewhat beyond the hermetic, enigmatic structure of its first season, it still veers too frequently into simplistic misanthropy. Throughout season two, the newly sentient robots are often as vicious and single-minded as their human captors once were.
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Apr 17, 2018
Season 2 Review:
Westworld season two goes to some unsettling and unpleasant places--it’s not always a fun watch--but as it settles into a chaotic groove, the show is becoming a thrilling mind-bender, laced with just enough intellectual resin to give all that bloodshed a savvy frisson of wit.
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Apr 13, 2018
Season 2 Review:
The good news is, several glitches and structural issues have been corrected and modestly improved in Westworld 2.0. The operating system is smoother, but the drama’s most insistent claim — or aspiration — is that it has achieved full sentience, or at least a modicum of arresting originality.
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Apr 13, 2018
Season 2 Review:
Westworld is enthralling even for those who prefer a passive viewing experience. The sweeping shots of big-sky grandeur! The endlessly creative violence! (Three words: Human railroad crossties.) And the performances--Wood slips seamlessly between characters (Dolores, Rancher’s Daughter, Wyatt).
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Apr 13, 2018
Season 2 Review:
Season two doubles down on the show’s meta tendencies. The Man in Black repeatedly announces that, thanks to the revolt, the stakes of the “game” that is Westworld (and presumably also the show that is Westworld) have been raised in a way that makes the entire thing more interesting. He’s not wrong.
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ColliderApr 13, 2018
Season 2 Review:
Westworld is playing with a myriad of timelines again, with some mystery attached to them. But the personal reveals within them are far more satisfying, with particularly great work done by Peter Mullan as William/The Man in Black’s father-in-law James Delos, and from Wright as an ailing but crucially awakened Bernard.
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IndieWireApr 13, 2018
Season 2 Review:
All around, the actors remain strong, including a number of new cast members. Where Season 2 stumbles is its structure and pacing. Episodes don’t carve equal time for everyone; they focus on the two most connected stories and sometimes break for an entire hour without getting back to a series regular.
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Oct 18, 2016
Season 1 Review:
With a star-studded cast (notably featuring Ed Harris, Evan Rachel Wood, Anthony Hopkins, James Marsden, and Jeffrey Wright), lush production design, epically sprawling story, and astonishingly huge budget, HBO is banking on the J.J. Abrams-produced Westworld to become a tentpole series. In a rare case, the network's investment pays off.
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Oct 17, 2016
Season 1 Review:
Westworld is explicitly, and often wittily, an exploitation series about exploitation, full of naked bodies that are meant to make us think about nudity and violence that comments on violence. It’s the kind of trippy conceptual project that would be unbearable if it weren’t so elegantly made. So far, it works, mostly--not because it’s perfect but because it gets under your skin.
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Oct 3, 2016
Season 1 Review:
Westworld is a slow start, and a slightly frustrating one; after four episodes, it feels like it’s just begun to probe deeper into its own high concept. The sequences inside the control room are fascinating, but the dialogue is often circular, swerving away from simple exposition into loftier ethical discussions.
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Oct 3, 2016
Season 1 Review:
Like the park, Westworld operates on many levels, and the ones that take place below the park are less successful than the vibrant but violent world the programmers have built above. ... The saving grace is the interplay between Ford's sensitive second-in-command Bernard Lowe (Jeffrey Wright), obsessed with tweaking the code to imbue the hosts with ever more humanity, and the hosts, particularly Wood's Dolores, who can shift from sunny self-denial to clinical self analysis at a word from Lowe.
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Sep 30, 2016
Season 1 Review:
Hopkins and Wright are excellent, as is Ed Harris as a guest who’s grown so comfortable in his role-playing of the Gunslinger that he says he rarely leaves Westworld. Evan Rachel Wood and Thandie Newton--playing an innocent farm girl and a jaded brothel madam, respectively--do very well in the context of Westworld’s inherently problematic sexual element. ... But much of the necessary scene-setting--of happy guests arriving and discovering the joys of shooting and screwing to their hearts’ content--becomes repetitive quickly.
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Sep 30, 2016
Season 1 Review:
When the guests--and we--have trouble telling the robots from the humans, things can get murky. Particularly when some of the "hosts" begin to show signs of remembering the traumas they've endured. It's as though the targets in a first-person shooter game suddenly developed PTSD. I think this is meant to bother us, but I don't know how long it will, based on the four episodes I've seen (there are 10 this season). ... The opportunity to watch Anthony Hopkins in a weekly series would alone be reason to watch, and here he's surrounded by people who can play at his level.
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RogerEbert.comSep 30, 2016
Season 1 Review:
Westworld gets a little cluttered as the four episodes sent to press unfold. And it’s a really difficult program to judge without knowing where it’s going. In other words, this could be totally goofy nonsense by Thanksgiving. But what I’ve seen so far has stimulated me philosophically while also just being incredibly entertaining, well-made, well-performed television.
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Sep 30, 2016TV Guide MagazineSep 29, 2016
Season 1 Review:
Lavishly produced, deeply fascinating and chillingly provocative adaptation. [3-9 Oct 2016, p.22]
IndieWireSep 29, 2016
Season 1 Review:
Some [episodes] are better than others, as the Nolans do their best to balance exposition and action; consideration and decision; questions and answers. Helping carry the load is a truly outstanding group of actors, led by the limitless talent within Evan Rachel Wood.
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Sep 29, 2016
Season 1 Review:
Westworld’s first episode is very strong, and its second nearly as good. It swiftly builds a world built on a deeply disturbing power dynamic that could make a decent metaphor for just about anything you choose. And then it backs away. ... Having achieved nuclear fusion, they abandon it for a backup generator, focusing on a needless mythology and quest narratives swiped from Lost’s discarded ideas board.
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